I really don't like killing stuff. I've eradicated varmints around the house, I used to hunt, and I regularly have to put down animals as part of my job, so I understand the need and can do it when necessary, but it always hurts a little to do it. I fish a lot and don't even enjoy killing those...a clean release is always the goal, and when that doesn't happen it always bothers me quite a bit.

Today I was driving down the road at work and saw little killdeer in the road. As I got closer it ran off the road, and I could see that it had been standing next to the body of another killdeer that had been hit and was lying dead on the centerline. After I passed, I looked in the mirror and saw it run back into the road to stand next to it's dead mate.

It was a pretty low traffic road and safe to do so, so I turned around, flipped on the flashy lights, and moved the body off the road so the other one could do its thing in peace and not get hit too.

I know we can't ascribe human emotions to animals, and for all I know the other one may have been getting ready to eat the dead one, but the way it was standing there as I approached and then frantically running back and forth was just the saddest thing I've seen all day . I'm also not sure what it says about me that I've been less emotionally affected by some dead humans than I was by that bird .

quote:

Originally posted by 92fstech:
I'm also not sure what it says about me that I've been less emotionally affected by some dead humans than I was by that bird .

It says you're human, and humans emotions are weird sometimes.

I've experienced the death of humans a bunch of times, both professionally and personally. None of them have wrecked me as much as the loss of two of my various dogs over the years, one of them just 5 days ago.

It's different.

Animals are innocent.

Dogs specifically love unconditionally.

And grieving/dealing with death is strange in how it works and manifests.

I guess I'm like you in that regard, 92fstech. I don't hunt or even fish for that reason. I stop to move turtles, snakes, etc, off the road.

A couple of weeks ago, my wife and I were driving back home from HEB in my pickup and took the freeway for a couple of miles. A small lizard had crawled out from the vents in front of my windshield wipers and was on the windshield, hanging on to dear life as I drove 70 mph. I was looking to get off the freeway when it crawled up the windshield then the wind blew it off. My wife and I were sad that we couldn't save it, I wished we discovered him on a suburb street instead.

Kindness toward animals is a good thing. Sometimes we can pull it off (like the OP), sometimes not (like oddball).

A young lady on my production crew came running into the work area Friday morning: “Did you see anything in the road when you came in?!”

I didn’t really know what she had in mind, so… “um, no? What did you see?”

She just about shouted at me: “A turtle!!”
And then she proceeded to tell me how she had “stopped right there,” turned on her flashers, and gotten out of her car to get the turtle out of the road.

She’s just 26, and super animated. It was fun listening to her, being so excited over having helped this turtle.

The “old man” in me kicked in, cautioning her about stopping in the road like that. (Thankfully, our building is the last one on the road, so her chance of encountering other traffic was pretty slim). But it was nice to see how excited she was about helping a critter.

Turtles are everywhere around here this time of year. We're a lake community, and just about everybody stops for them...it's almost expected that when you're driving around the lake in the spring or early summer somebody will be out of their car carrying (or dragging) a turtle off the road. There's a certain comraderie about it, and it almost restores one's faith in humanity.

And then we have "those" people. A few weeks ago some lady called the cops about a "leatherback turtle" in her neighbor's yard. She was afraid it was going to go after their children or something like that. I got there to find a sizeable softshell turtle making it's way through her neighbor's yard (a lakefront property) back to the lake. I told her to leave it alone and it would go back where it came from, and if the kids stayed on their own property and left it alone, it would t eat any of them on the way, either.

This little guy got hung up in the fence trying to follow Mom. Had to use wire cutters to free it.

Aw man....those things are cute as heck. Glad you were able to get him free. There were three of them in a field just bouncing around yesterday when I was out riding the bike after work. Scary when they run out in the road, but fun to watch otherwise.

One of the most hated aspects of my police career was the need to put down injured animals. Especially pets that people abandoned or let run loose until they get hit by cars or were otherwise injured.

quote:

Originally posted by YooperSigs:
One of the most hated aspects of my police career was the need to put down injured animals. Especially pets that people abandoned or let run loose until they get hit by cars or were otherwise injured.

Yeah, for the most part I love loose dog calls. I get to go pet a dog, take him for a ride, and talk to the friendly people at the shelter when I drop him off. Abuse is a whole other story. For a while I was actually jealous of my buddy when he got assigned to the animal control gig, but then I realized how many abuse and neglect cases he has to deal with doing that full-time, and quickly realized I'm happy to not have that quantity of horribleness in my life.